1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to wireless communication, and more particularly to processing of dummy paging messages and power saving.
2. Description of the Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, a wireless communication system 100 is shown. The wireless communication system 100 comprises a mobile station 102 and a serving base station 110. In one embodiment, the mobile station 102 is a cell phone or smart phone. When a near-end user (with the mobile station 102) wants to make a call to a far-end user, the near-end user is connected to the far-end user through a wireless communication link between the mobile station 102 and the serving base station 110. When no calls are being made, the serving base station 110 periodically sends paging messages to the mobile station 102 to maintain a wireless communication link between the mobile station 102 and the serving base station 110.
Paging messages transmitted from the serving base station 110 to the mobile station 102 are divided into two categories, dummy paging messages and significant paging messages. Dummy paging messages comprise no significant information and are only used for synchronization between the serving base station 110 and the mobile station 102. Significant paging messages comprise information notifying the mobile station 102, such as a request to establish a link for a phone call or a short message having been received. The mobile station 102 processes all paging messages sent by the serving base station 110 with a receiver with or without specific paging channel handler.
Referring to FIG. 2, a schematic diagram of generation and transmission of paging messages for the serving base station 110 of FIG. 1 is shown. A paging message comprises data content 210 of 228 bits in total. The serving base station 110 then performs a ½-rate channel coding with polynomial G0 and G1 on the 228 bits of data content 210 to obtain an encoded data 220 of 456 bits. In a GSM, GPRS, or EGPRS system, the encoded data 220 is then interleaved into four bursts 231, 232, 233, and 234, each burst comprising 114 bits. The serving base station 110 then sequentially transmits the four bursts 231˜234 to the mobile station 102.
Conventionally, the mobile station used to recover full data content using four transmission data bursts. Although the mobile station 102 can recover full data content of a paging message using only two good transmission bursts of the paging message, a conventional mobile station 102 cannot recover full data content of a paging message using only one transmission burst even in noiseless channel. The invention, however, provides a method for recovering full data content of a dummy paging message using only one good transmission burst of the dummy paging message. Thus, time required by the mobile station 102 to process dummy paging messages transmitted from the serving base station 110 is reduced to improve performance of the mobile station 102.